The tech YouTuber who opened a coffee shop

For the last eight months, David Cogen has been living a double life. By day: a YouTuber and creator, the face of the TheUnlockr channel, reviewing phones and testing ebikes and explaining how food smokers really work. By night and morning and every single other available in-between moment: a coffee shop entrepreneur, working to get a Brooklyn spot called Coffee Check up and running. In this episode, the second in the two-part miniseries that we’re calling How To Make It In The Future, Cogen tells the story of how a YouTuber becomes a coffee shop owner — and how to bring those two things together without ruining them both. Further reading: TheUnlockr on YouTube David’s Coffee Check announcement Coffee Check’s website Another fun YouTuber story: Me, Myself, and iJustine Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Robot Baristas. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here doing cold brew research. So about a year ago, I started making overnight oats a lot. I really liked the idea of being able to, right before I go to bed, basically make my breakfast, stick it in the fridge, and then it's ready for me when I get up in the morning. It's really helpful having a kid around in the house who also needs breakfast and likes to just run in circles, starting at 5:00 a.m. But it also just feels nice. It's like one less decision I have to make when I first wake up in the morning. So I've started trying to do the same thing with coffee, making cold brew. I drink iced coffee of some kind, basically 365 days a year. But I also like the idea of being able to do it the night before and then wake up, and the thing is ready for me, and I just pour it and start the day.

• 0:47David Pierce?

  That seems nicer than what I do now, which is like a 10-minute process of weighing things on a scale and gently pouring in concentric circles. It's just too much. But, boy, did I not realize how deep the rabbit hole of cold brew is. The ratios, the amount of time you're supposed to do it for, the thing you put the cold brew in, it's supposed to be really simple. You put in beans, you pour in water, the end. Time happens, and then you have coffee. Nope, turns out, like all coffee things, it is super complicated. But luckily for me, this is what we're doing on The Vergecast today, is we're talking about coffee. For this episode, which is the second episode in our mini-series that we've been calling

• 1:30David Pierce?

  "How to Make It in the Future," I'm talking to a guy named David Cogen, who you might know as "The Unlocker" on YouTube. He's been a tech creator for a really long time, doing lots of reporting and lots of cool camera test videos recently, and he's been a creator on YouTube since like 2009. He's been around this for a long time. And very recently, he opened a coffee shop, just a full left-turn pivot in his career. He's still a YouTuber, he still wants to be a creator, he's still trying to make all that work. But he also opened a coffee shop in Brooklyn. And I have a lot of questions about that. I think this question of what does it mean to marry those two things?

• 2:09David Pierce?

  And can you be both a small business owner and a content creator without those things blurring together? I had a really fun time talking to him, and I think you're going to enjoy this conversation, too. He had a lot of thoughts about what it means to be a creator, what it means to be a coffee shop owner, how the grind of YouTube changes the way that you think about your career and what you want out of your life. Why making YouTube videos and being a creator is so intoxicating in the first place? It was incredibly fun. I had a really good time hanging out with him in his coffee shop in Brooklyn. We're going to get to all of that. But first, apparently, I have to do cold brew 24 hours ahead of time. So I'm going to go do that, then I'll come back, then we'll get into it.

• 2:53David Pierce?

  This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 2:57Speaker 01

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• 3:22David Pierce?

  Welcome back. Two Thursdays ago, I took the train out to the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn to meet David Cogen at his new coffee shop. I got there about 8:30 in the morning. It would have actually been a few minutes earlier than that, except that the street the shop is on is otherwise so residential. It's just brownstones everywhere that I assumed I was on the wrong block or had overshot and turned around. But I wasn't. I was in the right place. I found the shop with this white coffee emoji light and a green checkmark emoji light on the front, and otherwise, no sign whatsoever that this is a coffee shop, which means it's a very, like, cool hipster coffee shop. That's how you know they're doing it. Found the place, went inside, and found a spot to sit.

• 4:07David Pierce?

  So I ordered a bacon, egg, and Cheese personal pie. Not 100% sure what that means, but we're about to find out. Uh, I got a large coffee that I'm very excited to try. It looks like the coffee here is called Founder's Blend, which is extremely on brand. I approve. Uh, now the plan is just to sit here, try to get some work done. Uh, have aggressively judgy thoughts about the wifi and all the coffee gear they're using here. And then wait for David to show up. Let's do this. I found out later, by the way, that David himself had made that pie. It was very good. One of those like hand pie sized things that comes in a little personal tin. Delicious, no notes.

• 4:50David Pierce?

  The wifi in there was also extremely fast. There were so many outlets in the room that it actually kind of made me laugh trying to count them all. And the coffee year was also pretty on point. I had annoyingly few complaints in my first couple of hours of coffee check. At about 10:30, David himself showed up. He'd been out filming for the morning, but he came in, stopped at the counter, said hi to the baristas, checked in to see how things were going, and then came over and said hi to me. He gave me a quick tour of the place, the shop in the front, the production studio in the back. We walked around the kitchen. He was very excited about an outlet thing that you could press on the counter and it would pop up. He showed me all the USB C ports. He was very excited about that. There were a bunch of e-bikes just sitting around.

• 5:33David Pierce?

  There was a gigantic Samsung TV that he'd been sent to review. It all felt very familiar to me as a person who has too many gadgets and loves USB C. And then at the end of our tour, we sat down in this huge podcast booth that he got from Finland at a huge discount in exchange for letting the company use it for occasional demos and sales tours. It's so big, they like, didn't have a place to put it. So his studio is now also the sales floor for this podcast booth. It's wild, but it seems to work. It fits four people and three cameras in it all at once, just in this little booth. And so while the coffee shop continued to operate around us, David and I sat down and recorded this episode.

• 6:16David Pierce?

  I asked him to begin with, just to tell me his story. And to start with the story of how coffee became part of his whole persona and brand in the first place.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  So I started doing these videos occasionally where I would do like a battery test or a camera comparison. And I was just kind of interested in vlogging and that kind of style, but I wasn't doing that on the channel because I was a tech channel. And so I started kind of making these battery tests and these camera tests while kind of bouncing around and like filming them in a very vlog-esque style. For those not familiar, a complete walkthrough of this channel is where I try to go through every single feature on a new device that I possibly can. So you guys are better prepared should you be in the market to actually go buy one. Now with that said, there is a lot to go through. And then I just kind of like- Somewhere between like Casey Neistat and Marques Brownlee was like- Sure. Statistically like dead center was where you were. Sure with like, yeah, with like, yeah, that's, let's go with that. Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Cause it was like not, not terribly technical, but not, but also just kind of like running around and showing you things. Yeah. Right. Um, and then editing it to a beat. Uh, so yeah, so that happened a bit. And then pandemic happened and during that, we were filming in my apartment, like I remember other creators was doing it. And I like kind of lost my mind as we all did. And as soon as like, we were allowed really to kind of go outside again, I was like, script, I'm filming this outside now. Because I've just done however many videos literally in on the same coffee table. And so I went outside and just naturally went and got a coffee in the beginning of the video and sat down and got my coffee. And I went coffee check. Like I got a coffee, right? Coffee check. And then I, um, then I would talk about the phone a little bit and then I kind of bounced around and I did that.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  And then the, I posted that and, and I even, I think I even talked about like history in the first one. I like kind of just went off the rails a little bit because I was losing my mind. Sure. And you didn't do that going like, I have just invented a catchphrase. No. Okay. Not at all. I literally just naturally went coffee check. Like I got it. That was it. Yeah. And then I went away and then posted that people were stoked and they were just like, this is so different and fun and whatever. And I was like, oh, you like this too. Oh, great. Cause I enjoy this. And so then I started doing more and more of that and I did a few and I got comments. They were like, where's the coffee? And I was like- Oh, oh, this is a thing now and I didn't realize. Okay. And then in the next video, I went coffee, check. And like got the coffee. Like there was a few videos that didn't have coffee in them and people were upset.

• 8:35David Pierce?

  So people told you it was a bit before you realized it was a bit?

• 8:39Speaker 02

  It was, it was the audience that told me that I had to do a bit.

• 8:43David Pierce?

  That's so funny.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  And that just became a thing.

• 8:45David Pierce?

  So do you then take that thing and you're like, okay, coffee is now part of what I do here. How can I blow this out? Right? Like there's a, there's a particularly like ruthless thing you could do in that moment. That's like, okay, coffee's part of my thing. Now who's going to be my coffee sponsor? I'm going to start selling a coffee mug as merch. Like there's a, there's a very simple, like, how do I monetize this road that you can go down in that moment? Did you start going down that road?

• 9:13Speaker 02

  I think in my head, I was like, oh, wouldn't it be really cool if I had a coffee sponsor? But I never, there was never any, anything beyond that. I was never like, oh, I'm going to go find one. But if we're honest, that's also because I don't generally reach out to sponsors. Like, and I'm very fortunate in that way that like most sponsors have come to me. And then I kind of decide whether I want to work with them or not. And it just happened to be there wasn't any coffee sponsors that had come. And I think I did, I did one, which I was very excited about to this point. Aeropress came out and did an integration in a video where I made an Aeropress with, you know, the S24 Ultra, whatever it was at the time. And so that was, that was really neat, but it was never like, uh, I wasn't trying to go do that. It just felt like, oh, wouldn't it be, it'd be a great fit if someone reached out and did that.

• 9:55David Pierce?

  I've been watching David's videos on The Unlocker for a long time. And it's honestly sort of shocking to me that he doesn't have more coffee content. So many of his videos start with a quick intro to the video, like what's about to happen? And then he just barrels the camera and goes, first things first. And then there's a long montage of him getting coffee at some cool place around New York. And then he goes, coffee, check. And then the video starts. That's, that's the thing. It's a good bit, but like lots of people drink coffee, you know what I mean? And I've always wondered whether he was really into coffee this way, or if that ends up being just a useful construct to set up a lot of these videos. Like I've filmed camera tests before.

• 10:35David Pierce?

  I know how hard it is to find interesting stuff to film and photograph on a camera to show on video. But then again, to be fair, we're sitting, recording in his coffee shop. So this fact should not surprise you.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  I was a coffee snob.

• 10:50David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  I'd like to admit that here.

• 10:52David Pierce?

  That was the word I was trying to not accuse you of.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's okay. It's fine. No, it's totally fine. I've accepted it.

• 10:57David Pierce?

  Anyway, all that coffee love went from intros and Aeropress into something very different last year. That was when David's lease was up. He had this space that he'd shared with a couple of other creators just a few blocks away in Brooklyn. And when their lease was ending, he started looking for a new space and a new project.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Initially, my idea was to try to make something for creators. I wanted to make like, I wanted a larger space that could then have some sort of community. I was just kind of craving that, I think, like a bigger community of creators to like, you know, inspire each other and do other things. And then I was like, okay, cool. Like, I went looking for a space. I found the space that we are currently in and I loved it. And then I did the math on, you know, how viable was this business model of like creators coming in? And like, cool, we all, you know, can use this space and film in and whatever.

• 11:47David Pierce?

  So you're describing like, we work for creators.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Essentially right. And I literally would have said those words at some point to someone, I'm sure. So we work for creators. And the problem is, I realized quickly after finding the space and doing the math, was that you have to limit the number of creators that join because, you know, people have to be able to film in here and you can't all be in here at the same time when someone's filming.

• 12:05David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 12:06Speaker 02

  And so inherently, it limits the number of members you can have, which means you have to charge a lot more. New York rent is not cheap. It just made zero sense. And I went, cool, great, done. Glad I figured it out before I started. And then I was literally in the space and be like, what else can I do with this? Because I just really liked it. And originally, when I walked in, I immediately thought, okay, a roastery. I would love to have a roastery. One, I would love to do something with my hands. I've just been a creator for so long that like, I feel like we all crave that to some degree at some point. And I love coffee. It was already part of the brand. I was like, okay, well, now this also makes a little bit more sense. So maybe I could start a roastery. I could roast my own coffee. And that could be my merch. I could then sell that to the audience. I can sell that to wherever, maybe other stores.

• 12:45David Pierce?

  You've become your own coffee sponsor.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  I become my own coffee sponsor in every video, was definitely part of that.

• 12:50David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Right? And I've been doing that the last few videos. I'm sorry to anyone who's listening, who's been watching my videos. I'm so sorry. I'm gonna keep doing it for a little bit longer.

• 12:55David Pierce?

  So your thought was like, maybe I'll just do this myself. Like, this will be a something.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  It seems like a side project? Is it? Is it? Is it the side project or is YouTube now the side? No, I'm just kidding.

• 13:06David Pierce?

  We're gonna get to that.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I would say, yeah, it was. It was kind of just like a, hey, this felt like a good, I don't know, like.

• 13:15Speaker 02

  A side project, let's just call it a side project. That's what it was. It felt like a good side project that also though had a lot of ties in with what I was already doing. Which is another reason why I did it.

• 13:22David Pierce?

  For sure.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Because if it didn't have that, it wouldn't have made as much sense. It was just like, cool, let me, you know, I already have no time. Like I'm as busy as it was with YouTube. Ask anyone that knows me, they're like, yep, David's always busy. So like, then I was like, cool, let me start another business was probably not the best idea, but it's okay.

• 13:36David Pierce?

  So wait, but on that front, actually, like in those first moments, like if the spectrum of ambition is like, guy brewing beer in his basement, all the way to like, I want to start Starbucks. Where would you say your ambition was?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  Way closer to the guy in the basement.

• 13:55David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I, cause like, I don't, and it's funny because even people have said stuff to me about like, oh, when you open your next one and do, you know, like, I'm like, oh, no, I'm never, that's not gonna happen. Cause like, it's so much work for just one.

• 14:08David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  And I, and I kind of like the idea of it being a smaller thing. The point wasn't to make an empire out of this thing. It was just to do something good.

• 14:16David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Right? Something that like felt good for me, generates revenue, sure, but I mean, you know, more so I, right now I just care that it depends on bills. That's all I really hope for. And, and it just was something that like, yeah, I was something I, something felt good about the idea. And it wasn't necessarily like building an empire.

• 14:35David Pierce?

  Okay, we have to take a break, but when we get back, we're going to talk about how you actually do all of this. Because it's one thing to say, oh, I'd love to open a coffee shop. Honestly, I feel like lots of people have at one point had that specific dream. You know what I mean? Mine personally is not a coffee shop. It's to like, throw all this away and go open a divey sports bar somewhere. It's even another thing to actually find and lease a space and say, okay, I'll figure this out later. And then to decide I'm going to do a roastery and then I'm going to do a coffee shop because there's a door. You start to go down this road, but actually pulling all of that off and doing it well.

• 15:17David Pierce?

  And do it without turning it into the exact thing and grind and lifestyle that you're trying to get away from in the first place. That's all way harder. We're going to talk about how all of that went for David. We'll be right back.

• 15:37Speaker 03

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• 16:08David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. So just to reset here, we have David Kogan, longtime YouTube creator, tech reporter. Apparently, according to his website, some people call him a geek-a-later, which I don't even know what that means and I don't really want to ask. Seems terrifying. He's been doing this for a very long time and he's just kind of, not exactly on a whim, but also not exactly not on a whim, decided to get weirdly into the coffee business. So then the question is, I suppose, what does it take to get weirdly into the coffee business? Where do you even start? So you have been a creator for a long time, like you know how to do that.

• 16:47David Pierce?

  I would not assume there are a ton of transferable skills between being a YouTube creator and becoming a coffee roaster.

• 16:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 16:58David Pierce?

  How, like, where do you start? How do you go, how did you go about that process?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  So I will say that there are some things that are translatable, which is like a love of data and like having to look at data. I feel like I bring that to the coffee shop in a way that I think is healthy.

• 17:11David Pierce?

  We'll have a lot of questions about coffee shop analytics.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  We could talk about that. I might need my laptop.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  But yeah, like, how did I go about starting it? So, well, first off, so when I did that, the roastery idea, I realized that there was frontage, which is essentially just like a term for there's street access.

• 17:27David Pierce?

  A door to the street.

• 17:27Speaker 02

  There's a door, yeah. So I might as, I might as well, because if we're going to be roasting beans in here, there might as well be something in the front where people can just buy them and hang out and sit. And so that's where the coffee shop then came from that. And then this back production space, which is what we're in now, just kind of made sense for what I was doing on YouTube and everything.

• 17:43David Pierce?

  Do you think about past? You now thinking about it like that like, oh, there's space. I might as well do a coffee shop. And you're like, that moron.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, he was an idiot.

• 17:51David Pierce?

  Nope, nope, yep.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Question that every day.

• 17:53David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:54David Pierce?

  Just curious.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  I will say, actually, like

• 17:55David Pierce?

  That's the most like casually I've ever heard someone decide to open a coffee shop.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I, it's funny because I went from like thinking about this to signing a lease in about three months.

• 18:04David Pierce?

  Oh, wow.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  And so like, I look back at that now. One, it was dumb, but, but also there was a blessing because I didn't have time to sit there and question all of the things.

• 18:13David Pierce?

  For sure.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And like, then now it's like, oh, it's too late. Cool. I'll just figure it out. First thing I did was I started to learn as much as I possibly could. I went to coffee events. I went to coffee conventions. I started seeing coffee classes, roasting classes, barista classes. I'm like certified in certain things like because I just like, I just, I think a lot of us do this, especially like most people I know that are in tech stuff. Like if we're gonna do something, we obsess about it until we're good at it. And so I started that process first.

• 18:41David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Well, sign the lease and then went, cool. Now I've got to start this process.

• 18:44David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  And then the lease wasn't, you know, it took a few months for that to actually start.

• 18:48David Pierce?

  So this is like

• 18:49Speaker 02

  And during those three months was just

• 18:50David Pierce?

  Yeah, this is happening.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, correct. So it's like, so I think I signed the lease in December.

• 18:54David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Ish. Yeah. And so like December, January, February, like, and then started, starting construction in here. But so while all of that process was happening, I would fly off to, I think, Chicago. I went to the SCA Coffee Expo, which is like one of the biggest ones. Took us all of the free classes they offered, as many as I could that would fit in my schedule. Went to Javits Center, had one recently, and went and did that. Started taking coffee classes at another coffee roastery nearby, like just obsessed, as you do.

• 19:21David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Right? And so that is step one. It's like, I felt like I needed to know enough that I could obviously do this thing. Once, and then throughout that process, though, it was getting built. So then it just took a long time. It took about eight months before it finally. You know, became looking like a coffee shop and not just a warehouse.

• 19:40David Pierce?

  You know what's fascinating about that, by the way, and I've been thinking about this ever since we talked? In YouTube time, eight months is like an eternity. If you work for eight months on a single project, YouTube's algorithm will almost certainly have forgotten you exist by the time you reappear. You just cannot work on that kind of timeline. But in building terms, like physical putting up buildings, eight months isn't bad. And I think one of the reasons it felt so long to David was that he was actually trying to live in both of those timelines simultaneously. To both be a creator at the pace the internet demands, but also do this deliberately slower and more personal and more thoughtful thing at the same time.

• 20:23David Pierce?

  It seems like it might be a healthy balance, but it also seems like it might just tear your brain completely to shreds trying to do both at the same time. For David, I think it was a little bit of both, but mostly the second one.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I knew it. I knew what I was doing and I did it anyway, which maybe that was the mistake. But it was having, running two businesses at once, like YouTube is a full-time business, like I don't know if anyone knows, but like it's a lot.

• 20:48David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  And it's a constant grind and it's very draining. Everybody burns out, right? It's a very normal thing.

• 20:54David Pierce?

  Were you burned out on it?

• 20:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I'd get burnt out every three months. It just like comes and goes. You know, it's like a cycle. I'm just used to it now.

• 20:59David Pierce?

  Yeah. But I mean, I wonder, like, there's a definite, there's a definite like armchair psychology thing I could do to you that is like, what a lot of people who burn out on YouTube do is like make the why I hate YouTube video.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 21:14David Pierce?

  Or they like go make a product or something, just as kind of a reset to use a different part of your brain.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 21:20David Pierce?

  Uh, and try to like diversify.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Maybe this is what I'm doing is what I think you're telling me.

• 21:23David Pierce?

  I wonder is like, if, if I wanted to really try and like psychoanalyze you, maybe, maybe that's a reaction to it where you're like, the, the grind gets everybody. Like it does. You're absolutely right.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 21:33David Pierce?

  Uh, and I can see why it would feel like romantic and exciting to do something so sort of diametrically opposite.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 21:41David Pierce?

  Of grind on YouTube every day.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Yes. And I think, and I can't think, I think that's like, that, you know, people wanting to do stuff with their hands when they work on the internet all day.

• 21:48David Pierce?

  Right.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  That's why everybody got into sourdough.

• 21:49David Pierce?

  Correct.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  You just missed that, actually.

• 21:51David Pierce?

  You just went, you went way harder on that.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is my sourdough. Yeah.

• 21:57David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Please come in and try my sourdough. No, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I totally agree with that. I think that's, that's definitely a part of it. Even if that was a little more subconscious than like a conscious effort, it was definitely a part of it.

• 22:09David Pierce?

  Okay. But you also kept the YouTube-iness of this space. Like there's a, I would say, what? 60% of the square footage in here? Maybe half, 50%?

• 22:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's say 50.

• 22:20David Pierce?

  Is, is designed to be like a production space.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 22:23David Pierce?

  Was that part of the plan from the beginning?

• 22:25Speaker 02

  So I always wanted to have that for a number of reasons. Just as a business person was like, I need to differentiate as much as I can in this space. Cause I just gotta pay rent.

• 22:33David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  And I don't know how long the coffee shop's gonna take. I don't know how long the roastery's gonna take, et cetera. So what's something else that I have some experience in, obviously, and was like, that could maybe also help just pay the bills for a bit? Um, and I did research, uh, on PeerSpace and started to look at all the other like rental studio spaces around here. Realized none of them had a kitchen. And so that was my choice for building the kitchen. It was like, cool, differentiator, kitchen. You know what else they don't have? A podcast booth, which we are in right now. Um, so got that as well. So it's just trying to like, create a separate, another business, obviously, but another part of this business that like, could help pay the rent. Because that's all I cared about, uh, and still do. Um, and so, yeah. So that, but, but the truth is like, cause this isn't, as, as we were talking about at some point, I don't, I don't need the backspace.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Like I film most of my videos outside now, as, as we've discussed. And so I don't really need to have a space that I'm gonna film in. Um, I, I, the bigger intent was for this to get rented out, help pay rent. But I do use it and I, I also kind of designed some things within here. For example, the kitchen has a very standard width of the oven. That way it can be swapped out so that maybe I can start doing appliance videos and not just phones and laptops and bikes and whatever else I do that are outside of a kitchen that are not as large. Um, can't do any of that in my apartment because it's, I rent it.

• 23:48David Pierce?

  Right.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  They won't let me.

• 23:49David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Um, and then I did the same thing for the fridge. The fridge is positioned in a way where it's on the side where I could get a double sized fridge and it would still fit. Um, and I tried to do as many of the things as possible. Same thing with the, um, I'm never gonna mount a TV in here because I wanna be able to swap them out to do more TV reviews is something else I would like. So I tried to add some elements of the space to benefit my YouTube channel in some way. But it was, it's, it's a small percentage of what this space should be used for, right? Really need to just rent it out.

• 24:15David Pierce?

  Okay. That makes sense. So, and to that point, actually, more broadly, like, how did you think about sort of connecting?

• 24:24David Pierce?

  The coffee shop to the YouTube channel. There are a bunch of ways in which they are very connected, including the name. Like it's, it's, you, you said Coffee Check in a lot of your videos. You opened a coffee shop called Coffee Check.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  Yes, which is dumb to anyone who doesn't know the YouTube channel, but it's fine.

• 24:39David Pierce?

  There's a, there's an easy thing you could have done, right? Back to the like, how do I monetize this thing on my channel question? Where you make this whole thing kind of about your YouTube channel, right? And you have a TV that's always playing your videos.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Terrible, hate that so much.

• 24:55David Pierce?

  And you're, and it's the background of all of your videos. And you, you try to make these things sort of symbiotic.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:01David Pierce?

  My sense is you have like deliberately run the other direction of that. Except for the little touches of the name. Like, why, why not push these two things closer together?

• 25:10Speaker 02

  So to me, I think I wanted to make sure that I could do a good coffee shop. And then it stood on its own for that. I didn't want it to have anything to do with the YouTube channel as far as like, you know, you know, I dread those, those headlines that are influencer opens coffee shop, right? And then, which are inevitable.

• 25:26David Pierce?

  Sometimes a lot of the people go to those coffee shops though.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is, which is great, but like there's, there's an implied like a lot of people don't like that word. A lot of people don't, don't know what an influencer does or, you know, and I don't, I don't think I would ever call myself an influencer, but you know, media marketing company call me that, so it's fine, you know? But it's like, there's a connotation there that I think that is negative in a lot of people's minds, and I didn't want that firstly. I also just, again, I wanted this to be, to live on its own. I wanted it to kind of be Easter eggs for people that know, like the Coffee Check symbol, like the name, right? But everything else is just, oh, it's just the local coffee shop that we enjoy and we like, and it's just, you know, whatever, that's it. Um, I didn't want it. I, I think on the YouTube channel, I don't mind doing the other way around, right? Because for me on YouTube to be like, hey, here's the coffee shop that I made and like, come check it out and like, here it is and filming in it.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I feel like there's less of a, like, it's, it's less weird to me that people on YouTube know I have a coffee shop. It's more weird to me that the people in the coffee shop know I have a YouTube channel.

• 26:21David Pierce?

  Interesting.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, does that make sense?

• 26:23David Pierce?

  Yes. And yet, I feel like every time you bring it up on your channel, you apologize for bringing it up.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 26:29David Pierce?

  Why?

• 26:30Speaker 02

  Because I'm annoying. I'm because a big part of it is that I keep bringing it up. And I'm doing that partially because I need to like get worried out about the coffee shop to some degree. And like, and so it's almost like feels like a bit of an ad to myself. Right? So I don't want, you know, so I'm apologizing for that. And everyone has been very sweet, which I very much appreciate. All the comments have been like, dude, don't apologize. Like amazing. Like so glad you're like, you know, living a dream, whatever. And it's very, very, very sweet.

• 26:57David Pierce?

  Well, I think this is, this is the thing.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  I still feel like I'm gonna apologize, so it's fine.

• 27:01David Pierce?

  But this is the weird thing about being a creator in this moment, I think, right? Where like you could, your point about influencer opens coffee shop is like, I tend to agree with you that it feels sort of gross.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:12David Pierce?

  But like, a lot of people will go to that coffee shop because for whatever reason, they feel attached to that person.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 27:19David Pierce?

  And that's a thing you can use to, for evil or for good, right?

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, true.

• 27:24David Pierce?

  But if you use it for-

• 27:25Speaker 02

  We've seen it used both by many people.

• 27:27David Pierce?

  But I think if you use it for good, there's not, there's nothing inherently wrong with it, right? And I think like even what your original story about how coffee check became a thing. It's like that, that's people being connected to you as a person. And like, they want to know what you're up to and they want to know where you're going and you're traveling and they're happy.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Where am I getting the coffee?

• 27:43David Pierce?

  Right. And so you, you get to a point where it's like, okay, actually what I'm doing is I'm bringing you along on this ride with me.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 27:50David Pierce?

  And that, that would have just required a very different approach. Like to some extent, it's surprising to me that you didn't make eight months of videos out of building the coffee shop. Seriously, like a lot of creators would have done that.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  I don't know if it's pride, it's, there's like, I want this to stand on its own. I want to do a good job at this.

• 28:06David Pierce?

  You want it to work because it's good, not because you're-

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Exactly. I don't want to have, I don't want that to influence it in any way. I want it to just do well. I want to have this coffee shop do well, the roastery do well, because they merit such things. Not because of some other outside influencer marketing or whatever else, right? I mean, I've seen enough creators hawk the things that they're doing and kind of being like, hey, yeah, do it. I'm doing, I made this thing and like, you know, I wanted to actually do something with my hands, like be in the space. Like not just like white label something, like actually make it, do the things and that and like, I don't know, I think there's-

• 28:41Speaker 02

  I think I start to also, a good way to put it too, right? I think I start to skew my own data when I introduce those other things. If I want to make sure that this does well on its own, I need to not kind of push all of those other things into it, because then I won't know what helped it do well. I have a very long lease, right? I did that on purpose. I want this to be a thing that doesn't just like, get a bump of traffic because of influencer word and then dies. Right? So it needs to be something that literally just can like, be a part of the neighborhood and be a good thing and grow with the neighborhood and outlast my YouTube channel. Right? This is the retirement plan, man, okay?

• 29:16David Pierce?

  All right, we gotta take one more break and then we will be back with the rest of my conversation with David Kogan.

• 29:27Speaker 03

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• 29:58David Pierce?

  Okay, we're back. Now we're kind of back to the present in our story. David just spent eight months creating a coffee shop from scratch while still kind of sort of maintaining his YouTube channel. The thing is open, people are here, I ate a pie. It's all real now. The thing opened in late August. People are coming, it's doing the thing. You can find it on Google Maps, which I think is how you know you're really legit. Which means David has to decide not just what he wants Coffee Check to be, but now what will become of the Unlocker YouTube channel. And most importantly, and maybe most complicated, what he, David Cogen, YouTuber and now coffee shop proprietor, really wants to do all day. And because of the way the tech industry works,

• 30:41David Pierce?

  he has had to make that decision really fast and really intensely, because it is gadget season.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  I think there were two days for the first time because I had events to go to because I'm now trying to go back to events. And I'm starting to travel again and starting to like get back into the normal routine of the YouTube stuff. There were two days that I was not here at all, and that's it for the last six weeks, maybe. But now because of that, I'm starting to try to get back to doing videos. I have such a backlog. Again, I apologize, everybody. There's like all of these, you know, like all of the Pixel devices, I'm still gonna do a video on it, just having a time. I finally did the flip like six, two weeks ago. I think that came out in July.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  So like I'm just, I'm trying to get through the backlog. And the way I'm doing it is I'm literally coming into the coffee shop and I'm writing somewhere in here, as you do in a coffee shop anyway. And, and you know, being pulled away to like fix this or do this and do that. And that's just, it's just kind of doing both things at the same time. And then I'm now filming all of the videos. I still do them outside, but they're all within a very short distance of this coffee shop for now. Because I just don't have the time. I can't go any further. So I like come in here and, you know, write the scripts for, you know, a day or whatever, and then run out, film that video and like check back in on the coffee shop in between scenes. And then, you know, wait for sunset because I need that to like get the night shots if it's a phone, for example, and I go back out for that. Come back into the coffee shop, clean a little bit, you know, reorder stuff and, you know, do inventory and something. So it's just been,

• 32:06Speaker 02

  it's literally just like a mix of the two worlds every day. Is the context searching of that brutal? Yes. Are you, are you gonna survive that? No. To be determined. Okay. No, it's been, it's, I've, I've been feeling pretty burnt out, to be honest, but like, but there's something, it's a different burnout. Sure. Right? There's, there's because, and I'm sure some of it's just, it's novel, right? The coffee shop is new. It is a different thing. It is very, we've already talked about it. It's very different than the YouTube channel. And so I enjoy it a lot, even if it's stressful and there's things going wrong and everything else. There's, there's something about it that is just so enjoyable that it kind of tempers the burnout from all the things that are happening. And I, and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel, I think.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  You know, I feel like there's, there is a world where this, where I'm here less and less. I can, you know, not have to worry about doing certain things. I'm trying to figure out inventory, for example, right? Like, how do I make sure that the inventory I can project in a certain way that I don't have to order every time things get low, obviously, right? So it's a goal you have to get to getting there. So like, that's helpful. Is that the goal? Like, is the, is the goal to spend less time on this so you can go back to making videos? I, yeah, I, questionable. I, I wanna do both. I enjoy both to some degree. I think I enjoy the coffee shop more than YouTube at this point. But again, I think it's something to do with it being novel and it's with your hands and everything. And I've been doing the other thing for 13 years.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  But I, you know, YouTube is still the thing I've been doing for however long, right?

• 33:34David Pierce?

  It's also, I assume, the business. Like, it's paying for everything.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. This is just losing money. This is just a very expensive hobby. So, yes, YouTube is paying the bills. And it is, it is kind of the thing that I've, I've built over all this time. I can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

• 33:47David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Um, not that I would. I still enjoy YouTube, but like, you know what I mean? So I, I've now just, I'm trying to just get back to a, a better cadence of making the YouTube videos while still being involved in the coffee shop.

• 33:59David Pierce?

  Okay.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  And I think that's the goal. It's not necessarily like step completely away from the coffee shop and then just run YouTube like I was. I think there, there's an element of like, if I could figure out more things to, to hand off in YouTube and make that a little more efficient, make the coffee shop more efficient. There's a, there's some, and maybe this isn't real, but there's some ideal world where I can kind of do both in a, in a healthy balance and still have a social life somehow. And I'll figure that part out later.

• 34:22David Pierce?

  Yeah, details.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  Details.

• 34:24David Pierce?

  Uh, I think one of the things people burn out on YouTube and really kind of creator life in general is just that it asks so much of you in so many different directions all the time, right? Like, I hear from creators all the time who are like, I started making videos because I like making videos.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  They were fun.

• 34:40David Pierce?

  Either the thing in the video is fun, or the process of making the video is fun, or something. Uh, and then all of a sudden, you're like, oh my God, I'm spending all my day essentially doing data analysis. Like, that's actually not a good time.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:50David Pierce?

  Uh, and then, and then your options either grind until it burns you out.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:55David Pierce?

  Uh, not worry about it so much and kind of limit your cap of success on the platform.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 35:01David Pierce?

  Or basically try to systematize, right? Like, hire people.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 35:06David Pierce?

  Outsource some of that stuff, make it no longer your problem, and you just get to do the parts of it that you like.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:11David Pierce?

  And, and sort of solve the rest around you. And it sounds like that's the thing you're aiming for after a long time of just grinding.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I look, I so I think I think there's a couple of things there like the I think that is the goal I would like it but but not quite right like I don't. I don't want to be a marquess like that's just never a goal for me. I don't want to have like or a lion or serve, you know, whoever else.

• 35:30David Pierce?

  Um, which are essentially media companies.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Correct. That's never a goal. I don't want to do that. That sounds like more stress for me than I want to be honest. It also like I don't need to be that big.

• 35:38David Pierce?

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I'm happy to like, you know, I I just want to, I think I need to let go of more things and this coffee shop is proven is like kind of forced me to do that. Not to the point where it's like, I come in and I talk on camera for more four seconds and I walk away and that's the end. I don't and also just the just the nature of my videos is very difficult as well, right? Because I I enjoy having this like you're coming along with me very vloggy style. As soon as there's a cameraman holding that camera, it gets a very different vibe, which I just don't want as a creative choice. I just don't like that. Um, maybe it'll happen one day because I won't have a choice, but like that's, you know, like, I kind of like bouncing around with you with the audience and like kind of. And I even enjoy making those videos where like it's literally me like exploring places with you. I'm I'm a lot of these places are new to me too.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Um, so I don't think I'm gonna let that go. So there's somewhere else that that I think I can hand things off, but still be as involved as I can be without. You know, killing myself and going insane. Um, but I do, but I also think like creators in general, we have this issue too. Which is the fact that like in order to do what we do, especially YouTube or Instagram, whatever, social media, you you have to. Make everything formulaic, right? So in other words, like in order to churn out as many videos as I do, I have to make everything so like. Fit into a box like I'm going to write the script. It's gonna be like this. I'm gonna get the shot like this. I'm gonna do, there's no area for creativity at some point. Because the only way it'll get done is if you make it as efficient as possible.

• 37:03David Pierce?

  Yep.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  And that is where I think we all start to burn out because then you're just like, I'm just a hamster on a wheel. Nothing feels gratifying at that point. It's just cool making a video, putting it out. Right? And especially around this time of year is even worse, but.

• 37:15David Pierce?

  That's what the audience demands of you, right?

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 37:17David Pierce?

  That's what the industry demands. Yeah. Over and over and over and over again. That's what that's what the algorithm's like. That's what the audience expects. And at some point. It just becomes.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:26David Pierce?

  Easier and way less fulfilling to just deliver the thing.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Correct. Yeah. And like, yeah, and you need to, you need to do the optimization in order to be able to do it. And the only way you can, you know. Keep up with that cadence is to make things as smooth as possible, not as creative as possible.

• 37:42David Pierce?

  Has that transferred to the coffee shop? Does it feel the same way?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:46David Pierce?

  No?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  No, which I think maybe that's another reason why I enjoy it so much. Like, there's, there is a lot of, because we just opened, there's a lot of creating all these processes and optimizing. And I do enjoy a lot of that, which is interesting. I enjoy it in this respect, more so than like, I think I enjoyed trying to figure those things out with YouTube, but now that I've figured them out.

• 38:06David Pierce?

  Right.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  They're just.

• 38:06David Pierce?

  Building systems is much more fun than living.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Than just living in them.

• 38:09David Pierce?

  Yeah, correct.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. That's a good way to put it.

• 38:11David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  But yeah, so like, I'm building those systems for the coffee shop. And every day, like, I get feedback from the baristas, or I'm behind the counter with them sometimes. I'm like, I see, okay, there's a bottleneck, like, let's figure that out. You know, hey, guys, what do you think, you know, what is a better setup for this? Like, is what's slowing you guys down? And like, that's fun. There's something, I think, as humans, we like to solve things, especially when they're small problems. Like, where the cups should go.

• 38:32David Pierce?

  Right.

• 38:33Speaker 02

  You know, like, bigger problems, terrible. But like, you know, these kinds of things are like, they're fulfilling. They give you like a nice, ah, I did that, I checked the box, right? And so there's a lot of those right now in the coffee shop that are fun to do.

• 38:44David Pierce?

  So, back to this like, content coffee shop mix, I can now imagine a world in which you become a coffee content person.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 38:52David Pierce?

  Like, the roastery is gonna happen.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:55David Pierce?

  You already do a lot of filming of cups of coffee. As someone who has watched your channel for a long time, I can, I can vouch for. There are hours of videos of coffee, of coffee cups on your channel.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  I don't even need to create new content, I can just splice all that together, boom.

• 39:09David Pierce?

  Exactly.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  It's a reel.

• 39:10David Pierce?

  To reverse all the questions I asked you at the beginning, right? You're like, oh, now I have a room full of coffee equipment. Maybe I should just point a camera at it.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it, it occurs to me, in, in, in the way a bad habit occurs to you, right? Like, I sit there and I'm like, hmm, should film this, make some good content, look at that. Yes, I think I always think.

• 39:27David Pierce?

  It's like a junkie thing. How do I make this content?

• 39:29Speaker 02

  It is legit that.

• 39:30David Pierce?

  And after a decade of YouTube, that's, you see the world as content opportunities. It's real. For better and worse, it's real.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  It is absolutely true. And so, I have thought about it. And I think, I, I, I think there is a world where maybe more coffee stuff ends up on the channel. Or the audience, you know, if they, if they want that, maybe I'll try it. And let's just see how they feel about it would be the way to do it. I mean, I did, of course, grab all of the social things for the coffee shop, just preemptively, because I was like, well, we're gonna have to start doing content here as well. So, I, I mean, I think, but that's different. So like, I think, I think.

• 40:06David Pierce?

  In the world in which we exist, you are going to have to take pretty videos of your espresso machine and put them on Instagram occasionally. And I think, to some extent, again, those things are symbiotic, right? Like, it brings people into the shop. People watch the thing, people like the thing, like, that's all good. But I also think it changes the way you think about the thing when it becomes most lucrative as a content opportunity.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Right. And I then become the thing I hate.

• 40:28David Pierce?

  Exactly. And so I think for you, as someone who is like, who is, in part, this all appealed to as a thing that is not content, to then have that pull of, what if I make content about this?

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:39David Pierce?

  And what if the content could help the coffee shop? But then eventually, you get to a point where the coffee shop is just helping the content. Like, how to pick all those things apart in your brain just strikes me as very complicated.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  So, so I think I've simplified it because I'm just so, I so don't want that last part to happen, right? I don't want that coffee shop to ever be making more money from the content than from the coffee shop.

• 41:02David Pierce?

  It becomes like a studio that happens to serve real coffee.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Which I don't want, right? Because then, because then, to the point, I would then just be doing the thing again, that I'm sure. So like, I don't, I won't ever let that happen. And so that, like, in the same way that, like, I don't want the influencer part of this, like, and I just want to have one coffee shop, I don't want to have more, like, I think these are ways to limit that chaos that would normally happen in my head. I've given myself this hard no. And, and so like, I, I think we need to make content, and we will. Like, right now, we're posting photos and stuff and like, whatever, I'm terrible at writing captions. I just have too much, too much to do, though, is the other problem.

• 41:34David Pierce?

  Sure.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Right? So, if I was gonna try to make content in here, and like, try to get back to my own channel, like, it's just, I'm burnt out as it is, that's just gonna throw me over the edge. So, but I do, I do like the idea of doing some sort of coffee content, maybe when things start to settle and they start to get, like, at least I get caught up on all the Techtober stuff that I need to get caught up on. I just don't know, actually, in my head, if that's something that maybe lives on its own channel and is kind of just the Coffee Check channel, and I host that maybe to some degree, maybe someone else can host it. Maybe I can set that up in a way where it's not just me. Because then that would be more scalable, easier for me to not have to be a part of all the time. Whereas like YouTube, Tik, the Unlocker, I'm not, I can't do that.

• 42:13David Pierce?

  Right.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Right? If some other face showed up, it just would be a totally different job. I just, again, I want this to be a good coffee shop, roastery, like, known for the things that are, that are those things. And not tied to an algorithm and other things like that.

• 42:26David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thank you to David for being on the show and for lending me his podcast booth to do it, and thank you as always for listening. As ever, there's lots more on all of our coverage of the creator universe and YouTube and links to David's channel at theverge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read the website. Lot of stuff going on right now. And if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, or other places I can record a podcast in the back of cool coffee shops, you can always email us at [email protected] or call the hotline 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. Please keep all your questions coming. It's the best. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poor, and Eric Gomez. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

• 43:10David Pierce?

  We'll be back on Tuesday and Friday to talk about smart rings, Kindles, and all the other news happening right now, because, again, I know I say this every week, but there just continues to be a lot of it. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 43:33Speaker 04

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